He says the reason, simply, is that the parts were not available any more.

Speaking on Monday he said: ‘We couldn’t get the parts anymore; not anywhere on Earth.

‘It wasn’t a matter of me swinging the axe saying “what can I kill today?”. The engineering work was massive, and the number of people who wanted it very small. I felt there were reasonable alternatives.’

The iPod first came about in 2001 with devices capable of storing up to 160GB of data.

Cook was speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s technology conference on Monday.